Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Colonel Troung was getting up from the desk again, excusing
himself with a polite bow, pulling at the creases of his threadbare trousers as
he stood.

“Why don’t you smoke at the desk like
everyone else?” I asked. I was worried about falling behind on our cases. “It
won’t bother me if you do.”

The
colonel’s eyes scanned the long folding table “desk”: took in the neat pile of
manila folders, the inkpad for taking fingerprints, the stacks of loose forms
anchored by a stapler, a hole punch, a small piece of cinderblock.

He gave an apologetic smile. “No
ashtray,” he said. “Too messy,” and stepped outside into the dusty heat.

The year was 1989 and the official ends
to the conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were years in the past. But the
borders still teemed with camps of refugees who didn’t want to return home.
Most lacked proof of official ties to the ousted regimes and would be denied
asylum by Western countries only willing to take in the politically persecuted.

My job, as a caseworker for the
quasi-governmental Joint Voluntary Agency, was to interview the displaced and
mold their individual hardship stories into narratives that would impress the
American Immigration officers stationed in the camps. Colonel Troung was my
interpreter.

The colonel’s arrival had signaled a
change in the nature of our work at JVA. That year, in a gesture aimed at
normalizing relations with the US, the Vietnamese government released thousands
of former South Vietnamese bureaucrats and army officers who’d been sent to
re-education camps after the Fall of Saigon.

Many of the newly freed fled the country
immediately, some by boat, others across land through Cambodia, paying
“snakehead” refugee smugglers to get them into Thailand, into the camps where I
worked. Colonel Truong was in the latter category.

He had been a rising star in the South
Vietnamese Army, had been sent to Fort Benning to train with Americans, had
been awarded the Silver Star of Bravery by American forces during the war. He
was what we caseworkers called a “water walker,” someone who would be awarded
US refugee status, no problem at all.

Because of his excellent English, he was
offered a six-month stint as an interpreter for our organization. So now, the
military wunderkind-turned political prisoner-turned refugee, was sitting on a
folding chair next to a twenty-four-year old caseworker in a bamboo hut on the
outskirts of Aranyaprathet, Thailand.

At first, I viewed Colonel Truong with
suspicion. I’d been a history major in college and had studied about the war,
how it was a mistake, how the South Vietnamese government was corrupt and
undeserving of American attempts to prop it up. The idealistic
just-out-of-college me had come to Thailand to help the victims of the war, not the perpetuators.

In return, Colonel Truong was nothing
but gracious and respectful.

He admired the seriousness I applied to
my job, he said. He advised his fellow education camp parolees to wait until
they could get me as a caseworker. He was patient, with kind eyes and a gentle
manner. With his oversized head and thinning combed-over hair, he reminded me
of an elderly Asian Linus from the Peanuts cartoon. More like an egghead
physics professor than an American-trained warrior.

He was also a nervous wreck. He would
spring up suddenly from our little folding table desk and pace the dirt floor
or gaze out the cutout windows of our bamboo wall. His hands shook and his legs
were constantly moving even when he was deep in conversation with a refugee
applicant.

Sometimes, between interviews, he would
tell me about his decade in captivity, about the forced marches, the compulsory
labor, the disease and starvation that did in fellow prisoners on a daily
basis.

“I was once so hungry I ate another
man’s vomit,” he told me, and then laughed awkwardly, embarrassed.

“I’m so sorry,” was my inadequate response.

He seemed to want something from me
during these conversations, some sort of recognition of the unique horror of
his situation, but I was unable to see him as anything more than one more story
in the endless tales of hardship and brutality that were recounted before me on
a daily basis. Before my stint in this camp, I’d spent three months stationed
outside Khoa-I-Dang camp, interviewing Cambodian survivors of the murderous
Khmer Rouge. Imprisonment, forced labor, starvation, it was all part of the cruelty
unleashed by the senselessness of war.

One time between cases Colonel Truong
unfolded a black and white photo of himself in dress uniform wearing the Silver
Star. It was an eight by ten photo, an official portrait, creased heavily at
the folds. He told me he’d taped the portrait to his calf before he fled
Vietnam. Other than the clothes on his back and gold to pay the snakeheads, it
was the one possession he had brought with on his escape to Thailand. It was
his ticket to the US, and he knew it.

In the picture, he is crisp and pressed,
grinning with pride. In some ways I could see the familiar Colonel Truong: the
wide forehead, the dark eyes, the sharp nose that reminded me of an Indian
arrowhead. But in other ways he looked different. His face in the picture is
young, angular. His eyes are brilliant, energetic and alert. His smile is cocky
and self-assured. Could such a man be capable of anything in a time of conflict?
I wondered. Bravery, heroism, cruelty, atrocity? What would have happened had the
war turned out differently and he could be jailer, not prisoner in its
aftermath? The idea of it made me shudder.

Because he worked for us, Colonel Truong
didn’t have to live in the refugee camp anymore, but he was not allowed to
leave the cheap hotel compound where the JVA workers stayed. There were five
other interpreters in situations similar to his, and the group of them kept to
themselves after hours.

There wasn’t much to do in Aranyaprathet
in any case. On Sundays, our only day off, the other caseworkers and I liked to
wander about the local open-air market. Once, while meandering through the
tables of piled sarongs, tin cookware, plastic strainers, and serving utensils,
I passed something that caught my eye—a kitschy, ceramic hula girl attached to a
turquoise lagoon ashtray. It was the kind of thing I thought was “campy;”
something I might have displayed ironically in my off-campus apartment back
home. I bought it for Colonel Truong.

I plunked it down on our folding-table
desk Monday morning.

“Now you have an ashtray!” I exclaimed,
happy with myself.

I
guess I thought he would react with amusement, but he said nothing about the
ashtray’s silliness, only thanked me with a bow of his head and a slight smile.
As if I’d given an order for him to accept it.

From then on he smoked at our
workstation and did not take breaks outside.

Colonel Troung smoked throat-scorching
Krong Thip brand Thai cigarettes, one after another. American cigarettes were
banned in the country at the time.

“Can I try one?” I asked once. I wasn’t
a regular smoker, just curious.

I took a drag and wheezed it out
immediately. It was like inhaling field hay infused with Pine Sol.

“These are terrible!” I coughed. “What
type of cigarettes did you smoke back home? Were the Vietnamese brands as bad
as these?”

He sort of chuckled, and his eyes took
on a far-off, remembering look.

“During the war I smoked Pall Malls,” he
said. “American brands are always the best.”

Day after day we interviewed refugee
applicants. Usually they were single men, but sometimes whole families would
array themselves on the wooden bench in front of us. Western aid groups
provided them with decent clothes and they would sit straight and proper as if
in a church pew, children scrubbed and combed, parents clutching Ziploc baggies
of what few documents they had. The hopefulness in their eyes never failed to
break my heart.

One time a young father who couldn’t
keep his story straight was trying our patience.

“The town he says he was born in is in
the North,” I said. “But he claims his father was in the Army for the South?” I
was trying to pin him down on specifics. When
did the family move? What was his father’s rank? Where was his father now?

The man stalled. In the silence, an
oscillating fan whirred and ruffled the stacks of forms on my desk.

The man’s wife said nothing but held her
eyes on me with a beseeching look. Their three young children focused silently
on their hands folded in their laps, as they’d no doubt been instructed to do.

Colonel Truong broke from interpreting
my questions and began lecturing the young man in Vietnamese. His tone was
stern but soft, in a caring, fatherly sort of way. The man bowed his head and
frowned.

The
interview was over. We fingerprinted everyone and placed their file on the
stack to go to Immigration. Colonel Truong pinched the top of his nose with his
thumb and forefinger. He was crying.

“They
will never make it to America with that story,” he said.

He
was normally so stoic and this show of emotion unnerved me. Did he mourn for
the tragedy of this one family? For the young father who reminded him of his
own lost youth? Or for the whole sorry state of his countrymen, crammed on a
foreign border, raising up children in the hopeless dusty squalor of refugee
camps with only the slightest prayer of escape? Colonel Truong had been granted
his freedom and a shot at a new life but until that moment I hadn’t understood
how irretrievable was his loss. These were his people and this was the tragedy
he was destined to carry with him even as he made a new life for himself in the
States. A generation lost to war.

I
was a rule follower in those days; not someone who would, for example, go to
the black market areas of Bangkok and pick up a carton of smuggled American
cigarettes. But I knew plenty of co-workers who would. Every smoker on the JVA
staff had a supply of Marlboros or Camels or some other American brand. On a
Friday when Tan, our Thai driver, was going into the city for supplies, I gave
him money to pick up two cartons of black market Pall Malls.

On
Monday, I pulled them from the plastic bag beneath my chair and handed them to
Colonel Truong.

“I
thought you might like these better than the Krong Thips,” I said, feeling suddenly
self-conscious.

His
hands trembled as he held them out to receive the gift. His mouth slackened,
his eyes moistened. He seemed in awe.

“My
old brand,” he said. “You remembered.”

He
held the cartons before his face, marveling at the crimson packaging, the regal
lettering. Pall Mall. I watched nostalgia overtake him as he travelled back in
time, as he became again the young promising officer working for the Americans,
anticipating a bright future carrying him, carrying his country up and up and up.

Emily Rich is the non-fiction editor of Little Patuxent Review. She writes
mainly memoir and essay. Her work has been published in a number of small
presses including Little Patuxent Review,
Welter, River Poet's Journal, Delmarva Review and the Pinch. Her essays have been listed as notables in Best American Essays 2014 and 2015.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

What I know about dads fits
into a 3 x 5 photograph, ragged, faded, and dog eared on one corner as though
someone was trying to save the page for eternity. The photo was taken by the
shore of a lake. He sits in a chair, with me firmly planted on his lap, a child
of few months still sporting my milk teeth. The wind is rustling his hair. His
eyes squinted into the camera and the sun. My tight ringlets must be tickling
his nose as the wind tosses my hair like a dandelion.

He is a handsome man, Irish as
Paddy's Pig, as they say, with dark hair, light brown eyes, an athletic build.
There is an assurance about him, the kind of confidence one exudes after
fighting in the South Pacific during the war. His gentle fingers wrap around my
body, though I can imagine that in another life they may have thrown hand
grenades or clutched his cross in violent prayer in a distant foxhole.

He was a gifted skater, a bar room
brawler, a sweet talker, with just a hint of cruelty at the corner of his
mouth, coiled like a sleeping snake. He met my mother when she was home from
college one December, a restless young woman looking for somebody to waltz her
around the frozen pond and warm her feet by the makeshift fire in the moonlight.
By spring thaw, they had married and began a life together, a life filled with
chaos and drama, long nights at the pub, the scent of other women.

With the storms and turbulence,
one autumn, before the first snowfall, he simply vanished. Slammed the door on
his children and wife and skated down some angry highway, leaving my mother to
waltz alone, and my brother and I to spend endless days in new schools
explaining to other children that we had no father. No father. As though he
whimsically appeared one day, then fetched a magic carpet and took himself away
to another realm.

When I look into the mirror,
or at my brother, I see him in our faces. We resemble his Irish heritage much
more than we do my Swedish mother with her glacial blue eyes and Viking figure.
I see him in my cheekbones and in the color of my iris, in the slant of
shoulder. I see him in my brother, in his quickness to brawl as a young man, though
later my brother harnessed that energy and put it into becoming a Marine, and
later a pilot, following in footsteps that were only marked in sand.

My father remarried, I heard. Asked
his entire family to never tell his new wife that he had two children. We no
longer existed. We didn't die. We were never even born. Ghost children, perhaps peering out from an
old photograph, creased and tucked into an ancient leather wallet, hidden from
the light of day.

My photograph of that summer
morning so long ago by the lake is one of the few reminders I have that I was
once held in his arms, the light summer breeze bearing witness. In the old dog
eared photograph, I am peering up at his face, but I can see now that his gaze
was already far off into the distance.

Sharon Frame Gay grew
up a child of the highway, traveling throughout the United States and playing
by the side of the road. Her dream was to live in a house long enough to find
her way around in the dark, and she has finally achieved this outside Seattle,
Washington. She writes poetry, prose poetry, short stories, and song lyrics.

I’m carving out time each day to just
sit quietly. No multitasking, no worrying about the future or rehashing things
that happened in the past. Just paying close attention to what’s happening
right now, moment by moment.

And in this moment, I’m perched in a
lovely half-lotus atop my brand-new meditation cushion. Although my eyes are
closed, I know the cushion complements my bedroom’s decor. Its curry color
looks quite handsome against the wheat-colored background of my antique wool
rug from China. This pleases me. What’s more, although my eyes are closed, I
know the brand-new standard poodle napping beside me atop my antique wool rug
from China will not shed. This also pleases me.

In point of fact, the poodle’s eight years
old, so it’s only brand-new to me. My daughter was the main reason there’s a
poodle in my bedroom. She’s wanted a dog for the longest time. “Oh Mommy, see
that fluffy dog? Isn’t it cute? Please, can I have a dog? Someday? Or at least
a fish?” But every time my daughter said, “dog,” I envisioned slobber on my
silk upholstery, scratches on my glossy black floors, and fleas in my Egyptian
cotton sheets. I felt like a failure as a mother, more concerned with maintaining
the museum-like atmosphere of my home than with my daughter’s happiness.

I wasn’t entirely sold on getting a
dog, but my interest was piqued when I heard about an eight-year-old standard
poodle that needed a home—a retired show dog who’d given birth to several
litters of champion poodles. Such a dog would be obedient and even-tempered. As
far as dogs go, this one sounded ideal.

But adopting a champion standard
poodle is an entirely different prospect than say, bringing home a fish. Prior
to welcoming such a creature into my home, I wanted to feel confident I’d be
able to welcome her into my heart. My husband and didn’t tell our daughter what
we were up to the day we went to meet the poodle. I stroked the poodle’s curly
black fur and enjoyed its surprising softness. I held the poodle’s long,
elegant muzzle in my hand and admired her regal face. I imagined how comforting
I’d feel at night, knowing the poodle was there in my room, asleep on the
antique Chinese rug. The poodle and I gazed into one another’s eyes, and I
decided that yes, I could open my heart to such a creature.

I imagined my daughter’s excitement
to finally have a pet. She’d have her pet, and I wouldn’t have to contend with
an untrained puppy.

Come to think of it, my mind is like
an untrained puppy. Notice how my attention just wandered off—replaying events
of the recent past that explain why there’s a poodle beside me right now? And
the thing I need to remember right now is that I’m breathing. I’m perched atop
my meditation cushion, paying attention to nothing but my breathing. I’m paying
attention to my breathing as I sit atop curry-colored meditation cushion that
complements my bedroom decor beside the poodle napping on my antique wool rug
from China.

The poodle sure sleeps a lot. I hope
she isn’t sick or anything. That growth by her rectum doesn’t look so good. It’s
probably nothing. Her veterinary records indicated it wasn’t anything to worry
about.

The next day, a veterinarian
recommends surgery to remove the growth beside the poodle’s rectum. But his
floors are dirty, so I decide to get a second opinion. The veterinarian at a
well-regarded animal hospital where the floors are immaculate explains the
poodle suffers from an enlarged perianal gland at imminent risk of rupturing. I
present the poodle’s health records, which indicate the perianal gland in
question had been surgically removed two years earlier, but the veterinarian at
the well-regarded animal hospital with immaculate floors is unimpressed. “They
probably didn’t get all the cells,” he shrugs.

The poodle undergoes surgery later
that week. It costs approximately what a reputable poodle breeder charges for a
healthy puppy, but afterward she’s given a clean bill of health. Back home, the
poodle spends most of the next two days sleeping. She dozes on the antique
Chinese rug while I read instructions for a walking meditation by Zen Buddhist
monk Thich Nhat Hanh. “Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet,” he
writes. “… every step makes a flower bloom under our feet.”

That night I awake to the sound of
the poodle barking. Undoubtedly she’s attempting to alert me to an intruder. Glancing
at my husband’s unoccupied pillow, I surmise that poodle has mistaken whatever
action movie my husband is watching downstairs for an intruder. “It’s okay,” I
whisper groggily. But the poodle keeps barking. “It’s okay,” I say again as I
stagger out of bed. I head toward the bathroom where my robe hangs from the
hook on the back of the door. I tiptoe over creaky hardwood floors until I feel
the antique Chinese rug under my feet. “Shhh,” fearing the barks will wake my
daughter. “It’s just Daddy watching TV—”

My voice trails off as my right foot
slips on something cold. Recovering my balance, the ball of my left foot comes
down on something squishy. “Oh-no. No, no,” I chant. My stomach tightens as
whatever I’ve just stepped in oozes between my toes. Hobbling on my heels, I
traverse the remaining distance over the antique Chinese rug to the bathroom,
punctuating each step with my desperate mantra: “Oh-no, oh-no, oh-no.”

I reach the bathroom and flip on the
light. Time stands still while I struggle to comprehend what my eyes are
seeing. My feet are covered in brown sludge. Turning to face my bedroom, it is
as if an army of Buddhist monks have conducted a walking meditation there,
tracking enough dung across the antique Chinese rug to fertilize an entire
meadow of flowers.

I conduct a triage operation on my
feet and bathroom tile and return quickly to the bedroom to assess the situation.
The situation is not good. The poodle, its vision obstructed by a
lampshade-shaped surgical collar, paces the antique Chinese rug. Coppery
marsh-like paddies are spaced irregularly over the wheat-colored wool. Several
paddies bear smeary imprints of feet—some human, some canine, some both human
and canine. “No, no, don’t move!” I plead. “Stay!” I correct myself. I lift the
poodle, careful to avoid her sutures, and carry her to the stairs.

“Help!” I call my husband’s name in a
loud stage whisper so as not to alarm our daughter, then louder: “Help! Help
me!” I stagger down the stairs toward the landing. In all the excitement, I’ve forgotten my robe,
and as my husband and I reunite before the giant window overlooking the street,
I have only the poodle to cover my nakedness. Exposing myself in the light of
the moon and the glow of the street light, I bark, “You take the poodle! I’ll
handle the poop!”

Back in the bedroom, I flush what’s
flushable and scrub whatever’s left over with Nature’s Miracle, a scented
product meant to prevent repeat offenses. Why?
Why? Why? asks my puppy-mind running in circles. Stop, I command. The poodle just had surgery, and her bowels are
just now waking up. The poodle was barking. The barking was probably the
poodle’s attempt to warn me she’d had a mishap. The poodle probably feels
terrible about this entire episode. I’m surprised by my equanimity, and I
credit my meditation practice.

Sure enough, the harrows of the night
recede in the dawn of the new day. I lie in my bed, my attention focused on my
breathing. Nothing to do right now but breathe. Outside my windows, the morning
sun kisses the top of the eucalyptus tree, and I watch the branches sway gently
in the breeze. When I’m ready, I rise and inspect the antique Chinese rug. The
wool feels coarse where I’d been scrubbing, but the color seems fine. This rug
is very old, I tell myself. Probably it has been through worse. As for the
poodle, the veterinarian has given her a clean bill of health, and with luck,
she’ll see my daughter through her high school years.

Wearing her surgical lampshade
collar, the poodle snoozes beside me while I settle into half-lotus on my
meditation cushion. I close my eyes and feel my lungs expand and contract. I
feel the cool rush of air through the tip of my nostrils as I inhale. The smell
of Nature’s Miracle is very strong. It reminds me of Tang. Did the astronauts
really like that stuff? I feel my shoulders relax as I exhale. I inhale again. Do
I smell poop? I peek at the poodle to reassure myself she’s still sleeping.

After dinner the next night, I’m
cleaning kitchen when I hear the click-click of the poodle’s claws climbing the
stairs. Isn’t that sweet, I smile to
myself. The poodle is tired and has
decided to retire to the antique Chinese rug. Fifteen minutes later, I head
upstairs toward my bathroom, intending to floss my teeth. When I reach the
landing, I look up, and the poodle’s eyes lock on mine. Her face, framed by the
lampshade collar, wears a mournful expression. “What did you do?” I say
accusingly. I tell myself not to jump to conclusions, but my heart pounds with
dread. I race up the remaining steps and down the hall to my bedroom.

I arrive at the doorway and flip on
the light. I’m dismayed to discover that the poodle hadn’t gone upstairs in
innocence. Instead, she’d returned to the scene of last night’s crime with the
express purpose of repeating her offense. Anger, denial and betrayal compete
for dominance as I take in the tableau—smeary turds deposited at random
intervals across my antique Chinese wool rug.

I cry out for my husband who rushes
from the den. “Bad dog!” he scolds. The poodle cowers and attempts to run away,
but she’s no match for my husband. I think he’s been watching another action
movie. He scoops up the poodle and deposits her in our kitchen. Where she will
pass another night.

My sleep is fitful, and the sky is
the faintest violet when I feel a set of eyes staring at me. The poodle has
managed to push open the kitchen door and now has her front paws on the edge of
my mattress, two inches from my face. “Off,” I growl.

A few hours later I head to Petco
where I purchase a crate for the poodle to sleep in at night. The crate is
beige and brown plastic and clashes with my decor. I put the crate in my
kitchen. Beige and brown and hulking, it looks like a VW bus. I look at it
parked there, and l feel sad as I drink my morning coffee. I look at it parked
there, and I feel sad as I sit down to dinner. I move the crate to a corner of
my bedroom, near my closet, off the antique Chinese rug. With my eyes closed
and my back turned on the crate, I sit on my meditation cushion, and I feel
sad. Very, very sad.

“Hello, Monarch Rugs,” says the voice
on the other end of the phone.

I tell the voice the size of my rugs
and give my address. I tell the voice about the antique Chinese rug and the
fact that it is wool. “Wool is highly absorbent,” observes the voice.

“Think you guys can get rid of
whatever the poodle is smelling so she doesn’t keep doing it?”

“We don’t guarantee against red wine
or pets.”

“Okay, I understand you don’t want to
give me a guarantee. But do you think
you can get rid of whatever it is the poodle’s smelling?”

“We don’t guarantee against red wine
or pets.”

I perch atop my meditation cushion on
my bedroom’s naked hardwood floors. The room seems austere and uninviting. I
close my eyes, and try to follow my breath. Instead, I follow the click-click
of the poodle’s claws as she wanders around the room. I hear her walk behind
me, toward my side of the bed. I make my eyes slits, and see the poodle is
sniffing my pillow. I close my eyes, and I hear the poodle click-click back to
the floor beside me and lie down. I hear the poodle sigh, and I know for now my
bedroom is safe. After a time, the poodle stirs, and I follow the sound of her click-click
walk to the French doors overlooking my backyard. There she stops. I imagine
her crouching in preparation to poop. Opening my eyes, I see the poodle
standing alert, ears cocked, facing the backyard. She is the very picture of
focused attention.

The full gravity of my situation
begins to sink in as the next days and weeks unfold. One morning, I’m unloading
the dishwasher while I drink my morning coffee. Turning around, I realize the
poodle has wandered off. I discover her standing on the vintage Japanese rug in
my dining room, and on the ground beside is a pair of fresh, brown turds. Several
days later, the poodle savages a meticulously woven Navajo rug. And twice the
poodle lays siege against a humble mass-produced doormat hecho en Mexico. The poodle embraces multiculturalism and does not
discriminate.

But I do not blame the poodle. Instead,
I greet each doo-doo boo-boo as a fresh opportunity to judge my shortcomings. It’s my own fault for failing to anticipate
that even a former champion show poodle would need to be taught where it’s
acceptable to “go.” It’s my own fault for not realizing that even a mother
who’d raised several litters of champion show poodles would need instruction as
to how to navigate her new home and to recognize which door leads outside. It’s
my own fault for not watching her every moment. I have to be more vigilant.

This awareness of my failings doesn’t
prevent me from feeling irritated and bitter. The poodle anticipates my every
movement, and she accompanies me everywhere. Sometimes she’s so close she
causes me to trip. I tell myself I should be generous and offer the poodle some
affection, some token of reassurance that she’s welcome in her adoptive home. Sometimes
I pet the poodle, but inside my heart feels closed and stingy. Sometimes I
wonder what it would feel like to kick her.

Things were better before the dog. Things
were better when my antique rugs were safe. Things were better before I had to
pay such careful attention to the comings and goings and bodily needs of the
poodle, before the poodle transformed the oasis of my home into a prison.

At night I toss and turn, analyzing
each new mishap. In the light of day, the situation appears equally bleak. I
sit on my meditation cushion, I close my eyes, and all I can picture is the
poodle and her pooping. The poodle’s life expectancy is another four to seven
years. I envision that time stretched out ahead, one long trail of excrement
leading throughout my once-beautiful home.

“I’m sure the poodle can learn where
she’s supposed to poop, but I’m not sure I’m the one to teach her.” I’ve
interrupted my husband’s action movie to tell him this. It’s the middle of the
night, and I’m exhausted. Sleepless nights have become a regular thing.

My husband pauses his movie. “Look,”
he says, struggling to sound patient and reasonable. “Training a dog just takes
time. And until then, we just have to watch her, that’s all.”

“We?” I say, my voice rising. “What
do you mean ‘we?’ I’m the one who’s stuck here all day! I can’t watch her every second!”

“We should just put all the rugs in
storage,” he proposes.

“Turning the house upside down? That’s
the whole reason we went with an eight-year-old dog!” Struggling to regain my
composure, I express the thoughts I’ve been afraid to admit. “Listen, I know we
just paid for this big surgery. B-b-but it’s just not working out!” My eyes
turn to faucets and the words tumble off my tongue before I can stop them. “I
mean, it’s all I do—keeping an eye on her to see if she needs to poop and
waiting for her to poop and cleaning up her poop and never knowing if maybe
she’s going to poop!”

“Oh my God, you’re obsessed! I don’t
want to talk about the dog and her poop!”

But there’s little else I can talk
about. There’s little else I think about. My daughter sees I’m coming unhinged.
“Mommy, it’s okay. I understand if we can’t keep the poodle.” I don’t want to
disappoint this little buddha. I think of the effort I’ve already invested and
the sickening possibility it’s all been wasted. I decide I’m not ready to
concede defeat.

I spend hours in the yard, watching
the poodle for some signal, some indication she is ready to poop. “Go poo-poo,”
I say brightly. “Go poop!” I command. But the poodle seems more interested in
eating the herbs we’ve planted in the garden. Tiring of my vigil, I bring the
poodle inside. Wearily, I ask my husband to please keep an eye on the poodle so
I can meditate before dinner.

Twenty minutes later and feeling
quite refreshed, I decide to prepare my family a nice dinner. But there’s been
an exciting football game on television, and my husband’s gone off to watch it
in the den, leaving the dog locked in the kitchen. When I encounter her there,
the poodle greets me enthusiastically. Unlike me, the poodle does not worry about
the future, and she doesn’t regret the past. The poodle lives only in the
present moment, and she’s forgotten about the three small turds she’s deposited
on the kitchen floor while I’ve been upstairs meditating.

But I’ve been meditating and am the picture
of calm as I clean up the poop. Sure, I’m disappointed to have missed a
teachable moment while I was off meditating. But because I’ve been meditating,
I have the clarity of mind to recognize there’s no point reprimanding the
poodle for an offense that occurred during some indeterminate past moment I
hadn’t been present to witness. Anyway, no rugs were damaged because the poodle
pooped on hardwood floors. I have the insight to recognize this as progress. Because
I’ve been meditating.

I feel my heart pumping from the
morning’s brisk walk as I bow low behind the poodle. “Good girl!” I enthuse in
an octave higher than my normal voice. “Good poo-poo!” I make this
pronouncement with genuine pleasure. That’s because for the past several weeks
I’ve subjected the poodle’s bowel movements to mindful attention—charting their
time and location. The wisdom born from this daily practice enables me to
recognize the small sack of shit dangling from my right hand as a precious
gift. The poodle has given me a gift of freedom, good for the next five hours. During
that time, I’m free from worry about the dog, and I’m free from worry about my
rugs.

I’m also free to enjoy to the poodle.
So later when I settle onto my curry-colored meditation cushion that
complements my bedroom decor, the poodle will stand before me. She will stare
at me with soft brown eyes, demanding my focused attention. I’ll cup her chin
in one hand and stroke the back of her neck with the other. “You’re a goo-ood
gir-rel,” I’ll whisper. When I drop my hands to my lap and close my eyes, the
poodle will nudge my arm with her wet nose, and I will pretend to ignore her
until I hear her lie down on the antique Chinese rug. When I hear her sigh, it
will be my signal to focus my attention on my breathing. And to ponder the
environmental impact of those plastic bags of poop.

Mara Cohen Marks’s stories have
appeared in Alimentum, The
Hairpin, Jewrotica, Medium, Mothers Always Write and Pentimento. Her essays and op-eds
have been featured by New America
Media, Los Angeles Daily News, LA Business Journal, La Opinion, and
rarefied scholarly journals including Urban
Affairs Review, Sociological Perspectives, and Political Research Quarterly. She holds a doctorate in political
science, an invaluable degree for her current position in the field of
uncompensated domestic labor. She lives with her family in Los Angeles. The
poodle is doing just fine.

Friday, November 6, 2015

If
you compared Buddy Burch’s
Christian ministry to the high-flying evangelism so prevalent in America these
days, you’d
probably conclude that his was a flop. Burch and his wife Lydia rarely had a
head count topping more than ten in the storefront church he pastored near a
brake repair shop in Waveland, Mississippi.

Unlike
the financially well-oiled megachurch-malls dotting the country, the members of
Burch’s mixed congregation, mainly
poor blacks and whites, had to dig deep in their pocketbooks for a Sunday
offering. More often than not, the loose change and crumpled dollar bills these
salt-of-the-earth kind of believers tossed in barely covered the bottom of a
collection plate.

Yet
Burch was not into that hard sell religion of pledges and fund raising. He just
didn’t believe that it was his
job to admonish people over money. Burch had realized long ago that the people
who came to his small church gave what they could, and he’d always trusted God for the rest. That was
no stretch for a couple well into their sixties living off a fixed-income and
disability.

The
Sunday offerings were usually enough to cover the light bill and other
expenses, and Burch never drew a salary from the funds. To help make ends meet,
he would park his pickup on the side of the road to sell firewood from the
tailgate.

There
was one irony never lost on Burch where he served as a pastor in the tiny Gulf
Coast community he called home. Before “getting saved” as a young man, Burch
was an unreconstructed racist who believed whole heartedly in segregation. That
is until the night God spoke to him. And he would tell you, he didn’t like what God had to say.

Burch
was at a revival when a preacher from Jamaica took the pulpit. The way Burch
described it, he sat in the pew of that little church fuming like a smokestack
on a fast-moving locomotive. He just didn’t
think it was right for a man of color to be preaching to white folks, God or no
God.

He
only stayed seated because his Cherokee wife urged him too. She liked to hear
the preacher’s
message delivered with a soft Caribbean lilt.

Once
the preaching was over, Burch stood up to bolt from that church. That is until
God whispered in his ear. It was the first time he heard God speak to him. But
there was no great revelation or epiphany; no answer to life’s biggest question. What God uttered was a
simple command: “Hug my son.”

Burch
stood there in the aisle of that church, dead in his tracks. He tried to shake
it off, but the command came again. Firm, but simple: “Hug my son.”

Burch
turned around and looked at the revival preacher. His voice was
shaky.

“Sir, I don’t know you, but I need to
hug you,” he recounted later.

That’s what he did. He embraced the preacher from
Jamaica. And what had been until then an impregnable edifice of race-hate
crumbled like dust.

Burch
was never a freedom rider during the civil rights movement, yet while the fight
to dismantle segregation in the South raged, Burch found himself drawing in
African American churchgoers to his services like never before. At one
point Burch received threats for preaching in black churches. Was Burch color
blind? No, but there was love. A love so compelling that it was tangible. He’d shrug off any hint of praise for doing what
he did by taking the message of Christ to black churches.

“I
went where God said to go,” he said once.

~

I
had met the Burch family through my mom when I was about four or five. My
mother played piano in a Southern Gospel group, and she crossed paths with
Lydia Burch in the small world of roving tent evangelists. The two women
became fast friends early on, and Lydia would often spend a week or two with us
in the summers. Buddy, when he wasn’t
pastoring, would come up with her. I ended up going to college in
Mississippi, and I drew close to the Burches at a time when the world around
me—and inside me—was opening up.

This
was the South and I, like most of my classmates, grew up in church. I saw some
of my friends’ faith
eroding as they pondered scientific theory, but the history and literature that
I devoured blasted away the old dust of religion I had grown up with, revealing
a new bedrock of belief.

I
didn’t find the answers to life I
was looking for in the dusty fossils of Darwinism or in political theory. My
mind was feasting on Faulkner and O’Conner.
I
saw faith revealed in Rembrandt's hues, in Johnny Cash’s lyrics, and in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's
writing. For the first time in my life I began to see the grain beneath the
varnish. The more I saw, the more I wanted to scratch that lacquer away. The
arts opened my eyes. Faith became my iris.

My
college, the University of Southern Mississippi, was only an hour’s drive north from the Burch household. I’d often drive down to visit them on the
weekends with the excuse of doing laundry. What I really wanted to do was talk
to Buddy and his wife. When I came down for a visit, sometimes Buddy would load
lanterns and gigs in his truck and we’d
fish for flounder in the tidal shoals of the Mississippi Sound.

But
most of the time Buddy and Lydia and I would sit at their kitchen table while I
waited on laundry. I chain smoked and talked about my dreams and my hopes.
Instead of browbeating me for my lofty, if not footloose ambitions to see the
world and write, they encouraged me.

Once,
when I was facing a steep learning curve in my college courses and I was close
to dropping out, Buddy Burch prodded me on with this advice: “An education is
something they can never take away from you.”

Some
may have frowned on the stark content of my writing, but they were proud of me
for following the muse.

“Truth,”
Lydia would tell me. “Speak in truth.”

I
knew book-smart believers brushed Buddy and Lydia aside as backwoods
bible-thumpers. True enough, Burch and his wife were foot-washing Christians
who could barely pronounce the jumbled consonants of Biblical Hebrew, but the
Word of God to him was sacred, and he treated it as such. He savored every
tittle of scripture as if it were a wonderful and redolent vintage, something
miraculous.

Later
in life, as a journalist in South America and in other parts of the world, I
met presidents, ministers of state, economic leaders, and the executives of
some of the world’s
largest companies. And yet, for someone who never made it past middle school in
the hardscrabble South,
Buddy Burch always loomed large in my mind and heart as a wise man.

Even
more importantly, Burch and Lydia showed me something pretty wonderful. That an
extraordinary God is often seen in the most ordinary people. Because in the end
that’s what they were, ordinary
and imperfect people who had the capacity to love God’s vagabonds.

Tom Darin
Liskey spent nearly a decade working as a journalist in Venezuela,
Argentina, and Brazil. He is a graduate of the University of Southern
Mississippi. His fiction and nonfiction has appeared in the Crime Factory, Driftwood Press, Mount
Island, The Burnside Writers Collective, Sassafras Literary Magazine,
Hirschworth and Biostories, among
others. His photographs have been published in Roadside Fiction, Iron Gall Press, Blue Hour Magazine and Midwestern Gothic. He lives in Texas.